IBM and Salesforce Strengthen Partnership

IBM and Salesforce.com have expanded their strategic partnership, bringing together IBM Cloud and Watson services with Salesforce Quip and Salesforce Service Cloud Einstein to help companies connect with customers and collaborate.

With this expansion, Salesforce has named IBM a preferred cloud services provider, and IBM has named Salesforce its preferred customer engagement platform for sales and service.

As a part of this extended strategic partnership, IBM will build IBM Watson Quip Live Apps, bringing the power of Watson and Quip together. These interactive custom-built applications will be embedded directly into Quip documents.

Building on the first IBM and Service Cloud integration, the companies will bring together the power of IBM Watson and Service Cloud Einstein to deliver new AI-driven recommendations for next-best actions. Now, with AI-driven predictive analytics, companies will be able to create personalized, customer-triggered interactions based on the latest call or messaging chat they had.

"Naming IBM as a Salesforce preferred cloud services provider demonstrates the power of the IBM Cloud to help companies fundamentally change the way they do business," said Ginni Rometty, chairman, president, and CEO of IBM, in a statement. "This expanded partnership builds on the combined power of Watson and Einstein to help enterprises make smarter business decisions."

"The success of our customers drives everything we do at Salesforce, including our strategic partnership with IBM," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, in a statement. "The combination of IBM Cloud and Watson services with Salesforce Einstein and Quip will deliver even more innovation to empower companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way, leveraging the power of the cloud and AI."

This deal strengthens an existing partnership between IBM and Salesforce to deliver joint solutions that leverage AI. With more than 4,000 joint customers, the partnership has already helped companies, such as Autodesk, implement Watson solutionsto connect with customers.

"There is a perfect marriage between Salesforce and IBM," said Rachael Cotton, senior manager of machine-assisted service engagement at Autodesk, in a statement. "Salesforce is where many companies like Autodesk house enormous amounts of customer data, most of which goes untapped. Combining the AI power of Watson and IBM Cloud with insights from Salesforce has helped Autodesk better understand its customers and ultimately create a transformed customer experience."

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